• Posts
  • RSS
  • ◂◂RSS
  • Contact

  • History of counting to three?

    September 15th, 2021
    kids
    Counting to three is a common way to indicate to kids that you're being serious and they need to do what you're saying, and I find it helpful with my kids. It's associated with Thomas Phelan's 1995 book 123 Magic, but it's older than that:
    • Tom Chapin's 1988 song Nick Of Time includes a variant.

    • My parents used it with me, probably also around 1988.

    • My dad says he learned it from my aunt, who says she used it with her kids in the mid 1970s. She doesn't remember where she learned it.

    There's something about it that feels reasonably recent to me, where it would feel out of place in a book from 100 years ago? But does anyone know more about its history?

    (It's hard to search for uses, since it is often just called "counting" or "counting to three." I wrote to Phelan and Chapin without a response.)

    Comment via: facebook, lesswrong

    Recent posts on blogs I like:

    How much time and money does an additional child take?

    Some things scale, others don't. The post How much time and money does an additional child take? appeared first on Otherwise.

    via Otherwise March 19, 2023

    What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?

    Early signs of catastrophic risk? Yes and no.

    via Cold Takes February 28, 2023

    Why Neighborhoods Should Have Speed Bumps

    I have several reasons I think why neighborhoods should have speed bumps. First, speed bumps are very useful to stop cars from hitting people in the streets. Second, when construction workers installed speed bumps on the street in front of our house it was v…

    via Lily Wise's Blog Posts February 27, 2023

    more     (via openring)


  • Posts
  • RSS
  • ◂◂RSS
  • Contact